by most measures it is the worst war happening anywhere in the world since fighting erupted between the Army and the paramilitary rapid support forces in April 2023 Sudan hasn't just plunged into the abyss but already hit the bottom and then continued tunneling down through the Bedrock for regular viewers the statistics are going to be oh so grimly familiar the estimated 150,000 dead the 12 million displaced the cities sacked and burned the famine stalking the land the ethnic cleansing underway in Dar for all of it adding up to a portrait of Hell on Earth yet while the conflict in Sudan is a civil war it's not the sudanes themselves who are sustaining it rather the war and combatants are being kept a wash in gold and weapons by outside forces Egypt Qatar Iran Russia Ukraine the houthis there's no shortage of outside Powers willing to pour gasoline onto this African Inferno but there's one nation contributing to the war more than any other the United Arab Emirates since the summer of 2023 Abu Dhabi has clandestinely delivered ammunition and high-tech weapons to the rsf it has supplied intelligence and treated wounded Fighters even as the paramilitaries carry out a genocide all in pursuit of goals it may be further away from achieving than ever before now to the outside world it appeared like nothing so much as a great humanitarian act an attempt to alleviate the suffering of Sudan civilians when the UAE established a base of the small chadian city of amjara Us near the Sudanese border emirati officials were quick to stress that they were building a field Hospital one that would treat hundreds of those who were escaping the devastating conflict next door but behind this concerned facade lay a darker motive since the base at amarus began receiving regular cargo flights in mid 2023 evidence has mounted that treating wounded refugees is the last thing on Abu dhabi's mind in January 2024 a un investigation declared that it quote credible evidence that the hospital a front for massive weapons transfers that summer the state department funded Sudan conflict Observatory released tracking date of 32 flights that it concluded with quote near certainty or transporting weapons to the conflict Zone Western intelligence agencies the official Sudanese government in investigations by Outlets like the New York Times have all reached the same conclusion far from a field Hospital the amjara space is being used to transfer huge amounts of Firepower to one faction in Sudan's chaotic Civil War not only that but it may also be a hub for intelligence gathering and treating wounded Fighters all in the hopes of propelling the paramilitary rapid support forces or rsf to Victory to call this a significant intervention would be too underplay the uae's role in the conflict while other nations medling in Sudan's Civil War none appears to have so consistently and steadfastly supported one side nor spent so much in money or political Capital to swing the outcome now to be clear Abu Darby strenuously denies all the allegation ations that we're reporting on in today's video despite the wealth of reports from International bodies and the US government the uae's position remains that its only interest in Sudan is humanitarian as we'll see though that's a hard claim to swallow as the times summed up the feelings of diplomats and officials quote eager to cement its role as a regional kingmaker the wealthy Persian Gulf Pro state is expanding its covert campaign to back a winner in Sudan funneling money weapons and now powerful drone to Fighters rampaging across the country and you better believe that rampaging is the correct word there flush with emirati weapons and training the rsf has helped turn the war into a byword for atrocity kicking off in April 2023 the Sudanese Conflict at first looked like it might be confined to a quick showdown in the capital carum between the regular army or saf and the rsf who until recently had governed alongside them instead the fighting quickly expanded in scope and geography until the HK country was in Flames among the areas worst it was the western region of Dar 4 where an earlier iteration of the rsf then known as the janer weed carried out a genocide nearly two decades ago as fighting broke out this time the group mobilized to finish the job overrunning and sacking city after City in a spectacular display of violence in Elgen alone it's estimated that 15,000 from the massalit ethnicity was systematically slaughtered although El Janina was a particularly bad example the pattern was repeated wherever the rsf seized power over the last 22 months the group has been accused of everything from looting to ethnic cleansing to the enslavement and mass abuse of women under their Rule now that's not to say that their opponents are angels the Sudanese armed forces are known for indiscriminately bombing civilian neighborhoods carrying out extrajudicial executions and have even been accused of deploying chemical weapons and both factions have used starvation as a weapon leading to what appears to be a famine that may soon even eclipse Ethiopia's 1983 to 85 famine in terms of Body Count still even when measured against the callousness of the military the rsf or something else a rampaging genocidal horde that expert Alex dwall has declared operate like human locusts as such perhaps the most important question anyone who cares about the Sudan conflict can ask is why is the UAE supporting them I mean what could Abu Dhabi hope to get out of entangling itself with these self-propelled Devils on pack we'll spend the latter part of this video trying to answer that question but first we need to go a bit deeper to lay out how exactly the Emirates are trying to ensure an rsf Victory when war first broke out in cartoon the general assumption was that the Army would win a quick bloody Victory after all the military had air power while the rsf did not given that overwhelming Advantage there was no need to think the paramilitary stood a chance that they in reality did is entirely due to Abu Dhabi in a confidential memo leaked to the Press last year the European Union ambassador to Sudan wrote about how quote the delivery of drones howitzers multipore rocket launchers and man pads to the rsf by the UAE has helped it neutralize the military's air superiority the key item there are the man pads or Man portable air defense systems supplied with these weapons and trained in their use by the Vagner group The rsf was able to blunt the military's once major advantage not that emarati less started and ended with their defenses over the 22 months of the conflict the UAE has supplied the paramilitaries with more than enough kit to sustain their war chief among those donations are Chinese drones used for Battlefield surveillance and likely piloted remotely from the UAE itself but they also include armored personnel carriers build by amirti companies like the nimma arban this last one is particularly controversial as it includes the french-made GX system which Amnesty International described in a recent report as quote a defense system for land forces that releases decoys smoke and projectiles to counter close- range threats built into emirati apcs under a joint manufacturing agreement between lacroy defense and the edge group the system's deployment in Sudan breaks an eu-wide embargo on sending any military kit into the country that's on top of the long-standing UN Security Council resolution the UA is already breaking by shipping kit into Dar four and then there are the crates and crates of Munitions when the Army retook vital sectors of the city of omdurman it came to have captured pars of Serbian manufactured Munitions that had been sold to the UAE after the Strategic town of wad madani fell to the military earlier this year videos were released showing warehouses full of emirati missiles taken together all this materials allowed the rsf to sustain the fight far beyond their natural point of culmination but it's not just physical weapons that the paramilitaries rely on but also emirati influence with other nations we mentioned earlier that multiple countries are intervening in Sudan's conflict from Russia to Turkey to Qatar to Yemen hoies all are responsible for prolonging the war and causing vast suffering what's been interesting has been some of the Nations that are now taking a back seat one such nation is Egypt which is one of the Sudanese Army's traditional backers initially Cairo supported the military but then Abu Dhabi offered to invest $35 billion in Egypt and that support all but faded away as a result the Army turn to Iran for help pulling another Regional power into the conflict then there's the nation of Chad where the amaris airbase is located by rights Chad should be supporting ethnic Dari militias against the rapid support forces much of the country's military leadership come from the sakawa group one of the groups the rsf is massacring in Dar War throughout the 2000s the chadian military supplied arms to zagawa forces fighting in Dar for against an earlier form of the rsf according to crisis group there's a lot of pressure from Chad's Armed Forces for president Debbie to do something similar today instead Debbie is allowing emirati cargo planes to supply the paramilitaries Via AB jarus the likely reason well that's probably the one $ 1.5 billion loan from Abu Dhabi which is almost equivalent to the chadian government's entire annual budget in other words the UAE isn't just sending weapons it's spending considerable sums of money to try and keep some of the Sudanese military's potential allies out of the fight so what could be so important about this one war that Abu Dhabi is willing to go to all of this effort to influence the outcome effort that has even included potential war crimes such as disguising weapons shipments using the logo of the red crescent a logo go protected by the Geneva conventions obviously as people with zero security clearance in the Mr government we can't say for sure but we can point you in the direction of the most likely theories theories that range all the way from cynical opportunism to Abu Dhabi playing a much longer game now perhaps the weirdest part of the U's intervention in Sudan is how sharply it seems to go against the country's own interests before the war erupted Abu Dhabi had already signed a major deal with cartoon to build a coveted port on the Red Sea Millions more had been sunk into agricultural Holdings intended to turn Sudan into the Emirates bread basket with the onset of conflict though much of those agricultural lands have been torched and while the rsf has seized most of Dar 4 it is the army that controls the Red Sea Coastline this last point is particularly important since analysts looking to explain away the uae's backing of the paramilitaries often point to Abu dhabi's desire for a red sea port as Alexander rondos of of the Africa Center told the Washington Post quote whoever controls Sudan controls the Red Sea yet even at the military's lowest moment last summer when they temporarily lost control of vital agricultural states to the rsf no one thought the coast was imp periled instead the talk was of a sudan that would be de facto partitioned like Libya with the Army Clinging On in Port Sudan even as the interior was lost as such it's hard to see how going all in on backing the rsf could have helped UAE achieve this goal especially since we really need to emphasize this they had already achieved it prior to the outbreak of War were the goal uh Red Sea port then their intervention has been the most spectacular misfire since Joker 2 hence why some turn to more personal reasons to explain Abu dhabi's behavior in this case the Deb emirati leader shik Muhammad bin zad believes he owes to the leader of the rapid support forces a general known as HTI back in the late 2010s when the rsf and the Army were both Allied under Sudanese dictator Amar Al Bashir HTI delivered boots on the ground to help the uae's intervention in the yeni war in a conversation with the then vice president Kamala Harris last December shik Muhammad seemed to suggest his support for the rsf today was payback saying he owes HED and hey maybe things really are as simple as that since we don't have access to the inside of mz's heads we can't say for sure but if it it really is just about a personal debt being paid then it is one that sure has come with some upside for the Emirates Chief among them access to Sudanese gold now Sudan is a major gold producer and most of that gold has traditionally been funneled through the UAE specifically through Dubai in 2022 the Emirates officially imported 39 tons of the stuff from Sudan with perhaps another 60 tons smuggled in Via intermediaries in places like Chad Egypt and Ethiopia since the war erupted both the rsf and the military have smuggled large volumes of gold to buy weapons and ammunition as Foreign Affairs put it quote gold has been a major driver of the war in Sudan the rsf is more deeply involved in the gold trade but both sides have smuggled and sold large volumes of gold to fuel their war machines the UAE currently benefits from this trade the extent of those benefits are a little hazy especially after the outgoing Biden Administration slapped sanctions on emirati companies involved in laundering Sudan gold but the millions of dollars that can be made smuggling Buon would at least give a concrete upside to the UAE rsf connection on a more abstract level there's also an argument that we're seeing a new Scramble for Africa only this time the major players are no longer European Colonial Powers but a pleora of countries in the gulf and The Wider Middle East the past few years have seen Regional powers like UAE turkey and Iran asserting themselves ever more forcefully into Africa some of that has come in the form of benign seeming projects like investment m in infrastructure according to the New York Times UAE in 2023 invested almost twice as much as China in the continent a staggering $45 billion other interventions though have been more destructive it was drones from UAE and turkey that helped the Ethiopian government win the devastating Tigra war and it was UAE weapons that helped prop up General Khalifa haar in eastern Libya in both cases the interventions were made in the hope of winning influence and in the case of Ethiopia it more than paid off in December of 2023 araba received HTI for what looked suspiciously like a state visit but rather than just securing influence for itself it seems like the U is hoping to deny that influence to its Rivals at the lower end these rivalries would include the Frenemy ship between UAE and Saudi Arabia with both competing to be the gulf's preeminent power at the way more tense end you have the Rivalry with Iran which is today intervening heavily on the side of the Sudanese military now the arrival of Iran in the war doesn't really explain why UAE backed the paramilitaries from the get-go since Tran only got involved in December of 2023 after eight months of fighting but it could definitely explain why they now feel they can't row back even as the Army seems to be on the front door with the rsf recently driven out of the Strategic city of wad madani in short it seems like a multitude of factors may be keeping Abu Dhabi in this war long past the point where it seemed possible that the rsf would win 2025 has so far seen the paramilitaries dislodged from strategic cities across the map yet the Emirates still backi all of which brings us to our final question is there anything that can be done is there any Nation or leader capable of convincing UAE to stop supporting the rsf as we're about to see it's a question that does not have an easy answer in the Twilight of Joe Biden's presidency the White House slap sanctions not just on rsf leader HTI but also on multiple U based companies doing business with the paramilitaries for those with no knowledge of the conflict such an act might have seemed like a shot across Abu dhabi's bow a warning that the United States could pressure them into dropping support for the rsf whenever it wanted but those who' been following the Sudan War just rolled their eyes the Biden White House had known the paramilitaries were likely conducting genocide for months they had known for even longer that UAE companies were helping fuel H's war machine with Abu dhabi's blessing yet Biden still went ahead and named the Emirates a major events partner in the Autumn of 2024 only the second Nation after India to receive such an honor and it's here that we come to the real obstacle stopping governments from pressuring the UAE to drop EDI the Emirates is just too important to Western powers to risk pissing off one of the major goals of the West in the Middle East is to contain Iran well UAE offers a vital counterweight to Tran's influence Abu dhabi's relationship with Israel is also warmer than most Gulf Nations and emirati companies a vine to help rebuild the devastated Gaza grip for the US specifically the country also hosts around 5,000 military personnel including at the vital aldaf airbase and the Jebel Al deep waterer Port it also buys insane amounts of Western kit spending billions of dollars on Hardware from America and France now all of that might not matter were the war in Sudan a significant priority for the Western Alliance but the sad reality is that it's just not very high on anyone's agenda China the Ukraine war Iran North Korea Russia military spending and trade Wars they all rank much much higher than the devastation unfolding across Africa's third largest Nation now that's not to say that no one cares Secretary of State Marco Rubio has singled out UAE as a bad actor in The Sudan conflict stating at his Senate confirmation here in quote as part of our engagements we also need to raise the fact that they are openly supporting an entity that is carrying out a genocide and expert Cameron Hudson has argued in foreign affairs that there are good reasons for the new Trump White House to care about what happens in Sudan a major one being the longer the war drags on the larger the chance that the country's deposed islamist regime is able to mount a comeback that's the same region that was long sanctioned by the US for Sheltering and supporting terrorists such as assama Bin Laden were the US to pursue blocking the islamists return as a specific goal they might even be able to get the UAE on board after all one of the other justifications mbz has offered for backing the rsf is that they would act as a bullwark against the islamists in Sudan something Abu Dhabi perceives as vital for regional stability so there are clearly places where incentives could align the only problem is that no one seems to be in much of a hurry to Ling them up and the longer the war goes on The Closer the country comes to complete collapse and the more outside powers like Iran begin to intervene with their own end goals in mind after all that then we can only hope that we've shed at least a little light on why Abu Dhabi might be fueling this most destructive Wars Honestly though the Whole Thing Remains something of a mystery one fueled by a suspicion the Emirates backed the wrong horse and is now stuck doubling down on a bad choice hoping against hope that they don't lose everything on this foolish bet and while they do so the war keeps on Raging more bombardments destroy hospitals and Massacre civilians at markets the rsf continues its mass abuse and enslavements of women in the territory it controls famine spreads Cities Burn children die of malnutrition on a scale perhaps not seen in decades and as every day of indignity passes Sudan inches closer to becoming a failed state with all the global instability that would Inspire the United Arab Emirates may not have started this war but it's sure as hell has kept it running the sooner someone manages to convince them to stop their weapons transfers through pressure or diplomacy the better thank you for watching